GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS!

By Richard Zoglin

I grew up in Kansas City, in the middle of Tornado Alley, so I know tornadoes. Or at least tornado warnings. My childhood experience with killer storms consisted mainly of trekking over to our next-door neighbors' basement (my family, tempting the gods, didn't have one) on those spring and summer evenings when the weather bulletins got ominous. Usually the excitement would be over in a half an hour or so, and we'd trudge back home, vaguely disappointed that the only twister spotted did nothing more than flatten a gas station near Osawatomie.

The drama of weather back then was all in the anticipation. Today it's one climax after another. In the proliferating genre of severe-weather videos and TV specials, nature in extremis provides the voyeuristic thrill of an environmental porno flick. Houses pummeled by hurricane-force winds tumble into the sea. People run screaming from rooms rocked by earthquakes. And in video shot by professional storm chasers and plucky amateurs, funnel clouds whirl forebodingly, kick up a storm of debris and move menacingly closer. Sometimes too close. In one oft-seen clip, a family scrambles for shelter as a tornado bears down on their living room: "Tree just blew over...Get away from the windows!"

Heavy weather, of course, has long been a TV passion. Nothing gets a network newsman's juices flowing like a good hurricane, with its made-to-order suspense ("the eye of the storm is expected to hit land at 9 p.m....") and the opportunity for daredevil theatrics (Dan Rather clinging to a pole in Panama City, Florida, as Hurricane Opal hits). Local weathercasters in the nervous Northeast treat every approaching snowstorm as if it were the coming Armageddon.

The movie Twister has sparked an upsurge in destructo-videos. Forces of Nature, a CBS special two weeks ago, featured grabby footage of tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters. pbs's Savage Skies spent four hours last week chronicling nature's bad temper. More than two dozen severe-weather videos are on the market--available by mail order, in stores and online--including several from the Weather Channel (Target Tornado) and National Geographic (Nature's Fury!) as well as smaller outfits like Goodtimes Home Video (Twister: Fury on the Plains). Tornado!, a Fox TV movie that aired last week, was the network's second-highest-rated TV film ever, behind The O.J. Simpson Story.

Why are we so fascinated with rampaging nature? For one thing, it's something we can all relate to and be in awe of. "Severe weather is the great equalizer," says Bob Potter, director of home video for National Geographic Television. Watching people getting manhandled by violent storms, moreover, adds a little excitement to our own humdrum battles with the elements. (Better bundle up--and take that umbrella!) Perhaps, too, it makes us a little more comfortable in our own good sense. Those crazy storm chasers may get some neat pictures, but at least we know enough to come in out of the rain.

--By Richard Zoglin. With reporting by William Tynan/New York

With reporting by William Tynan/New York